Industrial engineering has played a central role in creating knowledge on quality control and reliability engineering (Q&R) and delivering such knowledge to various industries. This special issue paper is prepared in celebration of the $40^{th}$ anniversary of the Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers (KIIE), and includes discussions on how Q&R areas have evolved over almost 100 years and on the current domestic and international trends of Q&R activities in industry as well as in academia. To identify academic research trends, all Q&R related papers published in the Journal of the Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers (JKIIE) and IE Interfaces are examined and classified according to their research topics. Recent Q&R related papers published in IIE Transactions are also examined and classified in a similar manner, and the papers published in KIIE journals are compared with those in IIE Transactions with respect to the research areas emphasized, yearly trend of each research area, type of systems studied, research approaches and methodologies adopted, etc. In addition, quality control activities in domestic industries are evaluated based on a recent survey conducted by Korea Productivity Center, and for domestic reliability engineering activities, government-led projects and their accomplishments over the past decade are introduced. Based on the above, recommendations are made for the future directions of academic research and Q&R activities in industry.